Drifting on the Precipice

If I was to die tonight, everything would be just right. But here I am, and all's not fine. Few years back I wouldn't have ever thought of being in a pub at this time. But here I am and all's not fine. The number of students in the lecture hall has been dwindling. Literature, as we know it, is dead. Dying perhaps. The last bastions shall fall soon. The watchmen shall go back to whence they came. To be burned between woods, the woods that could've been books, the books that could've been Hamlet.

I could've been someone rather than this pale reflection of a morose narrator. Could've been burning in the glory of literary fire, but now I sit amongst the smoke, coughing occasionally. No one cares anymore. Where is Italo Calvino? Where is Nabokov? It's 6pm in the pub and why is, bloody hell, anyone here. They don't serve whiskey the way they used to. The beer is all bitter nowadays. It was not so always. This new generation shall never know the difference and all feeble protests shall be gulped down. But I know the difference. I have lived those days. What about me?

A complaining sarcastic old man now, I was once a complaining sarcastic young man. Words desert me now. I have lost my mirth. Lets go somewhere far away into the hinterlands of humanity. Way back when everything was new. Men flying in air was a novelty to be looked upon as man's triumph over nature. Nowadays all everyone does is complain about the price of peanuts served in airplanes. Don't people realize they are flying. They are up in the sky where Gods' reside.I have gotten old. I hate myself sometimes. Sometimes I just sit all day patronizing myself.

Why am I here? What convoluted moment in the long and twisted history of mankind resulted in a bitter me mumbling to self in this dark, wooden pub? It's time I left. This pub,this life. It's time I walked away. The games lost, the pawns and the kings are resting in their box. The player survives the pieces, the player faces the ignominy solitary, of having lost the game, self and everything.

One last drink and then to the abode of the lost tragic hero we walk to.

In the house

I don't remember leaving the window open. The cool night breeze runs its soothing hand on my cheek. Look how high it blows, look where it beckons to. Stop,stop this breeze, this fleeting moment, a second of bliss in this lifetime of sadness. There's a hand on my neck choking me, an emotion in my heart bruising me. A pain I am used to.

Enough. 'tis enough. Shall not have it anymore. I shan't be humiliated by destiny, shan't be thrown around by the greater Will. Rashkolnikov killed her, I shall end my tragedy. I don't want to live. Down with the dictatorship of fortune, to hell with the divine Scribe. Where is the epilogue of every sad tale? Where lies the gun? Ah, the grim metallic reaper. So cold, so cold and yet the blood goes so warm. Why do I cry now that the revolver is held up? Why do these streams flow over the contours, now that there shall be no tomorrow to repent over? This world shall end with me. My world shall end. This sea of troubles, this outrageous fortune. I am sorry, Mom. Dad I wish it could've been better. The guns loaded. The barrel between my eyes. My last vision. This dark cylindrical barrel of the revolver, this endless hole that my life has been.Why? Why? Stop stupid tears. End this farce. Pack up the tragedy. Remember the dreams that you shall dream when you sleep, the sleep of death. What soliloquy was it? Hamlet, wasn't it. Some mortal coil. To die, to sleep. How belittling, now that I die literature deserts me too. What else shall this world take from me now that literature goes away too? Life, but life's just a trifle.No, no more, the last bastion shall not fall. How could I forget this passage? Where lies that book. Ah, let me check.

A thin line of saliva trickles in between those lips. The tears have not yet dried. Sweat, like dew drops on his face exists but merely. His face sideways with Hamlet below it. The revolver still on the table.

To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,